Dell Mini 9 Mysteriously Ablaze! (Pics)

There’s a big scorch mark on Hannah’s floor. It appeared last week after her Dell Mini 9 began suddenly sizzling and smoking and melting. We have pictures, and questions.

On December 12th, Hannah wrote us about her Inspiron Mini 9, bought in November 28 2008:

“Hi, last night I unplugged my laptop from its charger, carried it downstairs, and placed it on the wood floor of my living room.

I heard a loud popping sound and the room immediately filled with smoke while the laptop hissed and sizzled. It died down, I pushed it with my foot, and it stared hissing again. There is a large scorch mark on my floor.

It goes without saying, I am glad the laptop was not on my couch …or in an airplane.”

After we put Hannah in touch with Dell, the computer maker paid for her to FedEx her netbook to them so one of their Forensic Electrical Engineers could check it out. Dell also sent her a free, upgraded, laptop. It is unknown yet whether Dell will compensate her for the burnt floor.

Dell said they had received the crispy laptop but had no further information about what caused it to malfunction. The company said it was not aware of any overheating issues with the Dell Minis. “We take any report like this very seriously, and, as a matter of policy, our safety teams investigate thoroughly following any issue like this,” said Dell. “We will get to the bottom of this.”

Beyond one or two people mentioning in online forums that the felt their Dell Mini 9 ran a little hot, we couldn’t find any more information about this issue.

Theories as to what caused Hannah’s Mini to turn into a skillet? My money is on the battery. Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Kudos to Dell for doing the right thing here. Things go wrong with complicated electronic products, even if they’re thoroughly tested in R&D — they’re bringing it in to see what ACTUALLY happened (was this a fluke? a bad solder job? bad chip? or a wider design problem?). In the meantime, Hannah got a nice new laptop.

Though, I hope Dell also offers to pay to clean up her floor (if it’s more than just surface soot).

I’m guessing the battery is under there, and it just sploded. They do that from time to time. “Running hot” doesn’t cause anything to catch fire…and if it was something like the CPU fan failing, the machine would just lock up and/or shut down – it wouldn’t catch fire.

I have two dell Mini 9’s and I can confirm that the melted part is the left side of the battery. Mini 9’s don’t have fans (no moving parts at all actually, with solid state drives) – the bottoms can get pretty hot, but nothing like this with mine (so far)

Stand down, colonel. Yes, it’s a made up word, get over it. And it does make sense, since you clearly understood what I was saying. I get to use a little bit of literary shenanigan to inflect through text the way I’d say something in person.

…next big Hollywood blockbuster… “Laptops on a Plane!” What will be the outcome as our hero tries to save everyone and the world from flaming laptops on a plane… and our hero without his bottle of water (confiscated)!

Wait, in that center photo…Yes! The film appears to have captured the image of a spirit that wasn’t visible to the naked eye, but the film and camera seems to have been able to capture it. You can see the ectoplasm from it’s angry attack. Someone call TAPS! They don’t need an electrical engineer, they need an exorcist!

But seriously, given the visible litter box in the pict, it’s possible that some hair got into the machine and caused a short or prevented the heat from escaping properly. I find tons of cat hair in all my computers, unless they are 9-12 inches off the ground. Then it’s only pounds of it.

I hear ya…I found the closer I put the computer to the floor…the more likely I’ll be able to catch an actual cat, and I don’t have cats. Apparently, my computer emits some kind of strange electric charge that cats can not resist….a proverbial Pied Piper of cats if you will.

Which brings me to the smoke in the picture which was deployed by the cat, in turn hiding the cats ninja like skills…while the cat deployed it’s hair into the laptop causing the laptop to stop it’s harmonious electrical charge. Which in turn caused the noises she heard, and while she was distracted with the noises and pushing the laptop with her foot…the cat made it’s get away by cutting a hole in the floor which left a burn mark on said floor.

It could’ve been something that got into the keyboard igniting – foodstuffs, etc – but I don’t see that causing such a high intensity fire. My god, I would’ve gone after the damn thing with my fire extinguisher and that would’ve made a RIGHT MESS!

I’m typically surprised companies aren’t quicker to resolve these fire related issues, not that Dell is doing a horrible job but I’d think spontaneous combustion would be bad PR and something you’d want to resolve fast.

I had a 2 week old seagate hard drive burst into flames on me, thinking I had the easiest RMA call ever I called them up expecting an easy refund and to my surprise they initially refused to help me citing that fire voided my warranty. I had to battle them for nearly a week for replacement and even then they’d only replace it with the same model which I didn’t trust. I don’t know why you’d risk an $80 hard drive RMA over a potential lawsuit issue. If it were my product and company I’d want to resolve the issue as quickly and quietly as possible.

I’m sorry, know that you had to have been upset, but I just had a major fit of the snickers when you said your item caught fire, and the fire voided the warranty. Hope you did get it replaced after they were done turning themselves and you inside out trying to get out of doing the right thing.

Oh yeah it was like something right out of a Dilbert comic strip, the customer service guy practically cut me off as soon I as mentioned fire and said it voids my warranty. I tried explaining that the hard drive caused the fire and was the only thing on fire so how could it’s catching fire void the warranty? Eventually I had to take pictures of it and send them in, then 3 days later they wanted me to mail the hard drive at my expense and they’d only replace it with the exact same model.

To clarify this was actually a Maxtor hard drive but Seagate has owned them for a few years now and handles their support and manufacturing. I requested the comparable Seagate equivalent of the hard drive instead of the Maxtor model which caught fire but they wouldn’t even do that. I did not think that was an unreasonable request but they wouldn’t budge. I will never purchase their products again it’s just that simple.

It’s almost certainly the battery. Nothing else could cause that level of damage – if the CPU cooling went out, you at worst would be stuck with a melted CPU. In reality, you would every likely just end up with a computer that wouldn’t run longer then a few seconds before shutting itself down.

Lithium Ion batteries require special charge circuitry. Ideally, if that circuitry fails, you shouldn’t be able to charge a lithium ion battery at all – but if the protection circuitry failed and it kept charging, you could easily end up with a situation like this. By nature, Lion batteries are somewhat unstable, and you have to be extremely careful if you’re designing the charge circuitry for anything that uses one.

Just to point out, as an owner of a Mini 10V, these netbooks are passively cooled, meaning no fans. So it has to be the battery. As to the circuitry in the battery itself, from what I understand it’s designed to ensure the battery continues functioning in the event of the first cell being burned out. There also is an overcharge prevention circuit in them as well to prevent the battery from getting too much of a charge and exploding. Some batteries, like the ones used in cordless drills have the overcharge protection built into the charger, thus the need for a Li Ion charger.

I have an E310 that is 3+ years old and my only complaints are that it doesn’t have a PCI x16 slot and the power supply is under powered. Both my own damn fault when I ordered it.
I’ll gift it this coming year to the in-laws, replacing their 5+ year old Dell. That will soften the blow when my wife sees the bill for the DIY build I have planned.

I have a Dell Inspiron 5100 that I got in ’04, and asides from a few minor things, it’s still going strong. It IS a tad slow, so I’m looking at a replacement due to its age, but it’s been a good laptop.

I have a Dell Dimension 5100, bought from the outlet when we bought our house 3 years ago. Added in a floppy drive (don’t ask) and a DVD/RW. Had a stick of RAM go bad last year. Replaced it. Done. Still going strong. I will replace the harddrive soon, as I know what the life expectancy is on those, and don’t want to be caught short.

My last Dell (my first self-purchased computer) lasted 5 years+ without any major problems, except for a CD-ROM that died and had to be replaced.

Certainly don’t want to pick on the OP, since it’s clearly not her fault that the Dell decided to spontaneously combust….. BUT…..
Is it just me, or is the opening line of her explanation kind of strange? “Hi, last night I unplugged my laptop from its charger, carried it downstairs, and placed it on the wood floor of my living room.”
Uh, why did you put your laptop on your living room floor?
Don’t most poeple use a table, a couch, a chair, something above knee-level at least, to put their laptops on? I just think it’s so weird, and gee lucky, that she put this on the floor before it caught fire……

Well, if you look at the OP pictures…I don’t believe they have any furniture as it would interfere with their “Downward Facing Dog – Adho Mukha Svanasana” Yoga position. So, it would be perfectly logical to have set said laptop on the floor.

This is my daughter’s computer, she called me in a panic when it caught fire. She took it in to the computer tech guys at her college campus and they were very impressed – especially in light of the fact that her netbook was otherwise in pristine condition. They told her, they had always suspected that these cases were the fault of the owners, saying “You should see what some people do to their computers, they probably tie them to strings and drag them behind their cars,” but that hers was so obviously well taken care of she presented “a new and significant data point” about spontaneous combustion of computers. I take offense at the suggestions here that it was HER fault. It was not hacked in any way, it was precisely as it comes from the manufacturer. She is a careful and responsible computer owner. AND EVEN IF SHE WEREN’T I don’t believe there are any circumstances under which it’s ok for a computer to burst into flames.